Cavanaugh and Hite moved to internal roles at Virginia Tech

Jim Cavanaugh and Billy Hite will continue to serve in roles for Virginia Tech's athletic department, but they'll no longer be active members of the football coaching staff, according to Tech athletic director Jim Weaver.

Cavanaugh, 64, and Hite, 62, already had been working in non-coaching roles for the past two years on Tech's football coaching staff. Tech won't hire replacements to fill the roles Cavanaugh and Hite vacated.

In 2011, Cavanaugh was moved from recruiting coordinator and strong safety and outside linebackers coach to director of high school relations and recruiting director, while Hite's duties were transferred from associate head coach and running backs coach to assistant to the head coach and senior advisor. Now, they'll function more in the fundraising and alumni support areas of operations.

"They're going to be involved in some duties within the department, but outside of the football program," Weaver said. "They're going to be involved with some of the athletes when the various teams have functions, trying to help the Hokie Club create some new potential donors and things like that."

Cavanaugh and Hite have both dealt with health issues in recent years, but they were two of the most experienced assistant coaches in the nation when they were removed in 2011 from their on-field duties.

Cavanaugh, a native of Queens, N.Y., who started his coaching career in 1970 at Newport News High and '71 at Denbigh High, was an on-field assistant coach from 1972-2010.

When Hite was taken from his on-field duties, he was the longest-tenured assistant coach in college football with 34 seasons at Tech. Hite, a Washington, D.C. native, was the running backs coach from '74-77 at UNC, his alma mater, before coming to Tech.

From '78 through 2010, he held roles as Tech's running backs coach, assistant head coach and associate head coach under former coach Bill Dooley and current coach Frank Beamer. He was on Tech's sideline for 397 consecutive games through 2010, but he continued to stay on the sideline for every game in the '11 and '12 seasons in a support role for Beamer.